Inflatable boat/rubber raft features:
Compared with wood, aluminum alloy and glass steel small boat, inflatable boat has obvious advantages. Wood and other rigid small inflatable boat are good water carriers under the premise of reasonable design and reliable manufacturing quality. However, compared with inflatable boat, such inflatable boat have the following obvious disadvantages:
● It cannot be disassembled, lacks the functions that can be flexibly transferred on land and quickly put into use in much-needed waters, and needs to be kept on the water surface for a long time;
● except for fully enclosed lifeboat, overturning and other risks are easy to occur under wind and wave conditions;
● If it is hit violently, it is easy to crack and cause serious consequences;
● There is considerable maintenance workload every year. In contrast, inflatable boat has the following advantages:
● It can be disassembled, stored and flexibly transferred, and can be quickly put into use in urgent need;
● There are inflatable buoyancy tires at the ship body boundary, which can greatly avoid the danger of overturning in the wind and waves;
● good anti-impact buffering effect;
● easy maintenance and relatively small maintenance workload.
In addition, because inflatable boat is very light, it is superior to inflatable boat such as wood in terms of speed and fuel consumption economy no matter comparing with the same horsepower or speed.
Inflatable boat/rubber raft material
There are many types of inflatable boat, which can be used in different fields. Its quality is affected by many factors such as material and manufacturing process. At present, international famous brands mainly use high-strength (1100D) synthetic rubber tape and natural rubber tape, while other products mostly use PVC tape (cheap materials, low heat-combined manufacturing cost, easy to promote). Due to different materials, the quality of inflatable boat is obviously different as described in the following table.
In addition, due to the difference in the quality of the inner layer of rubber fabric, the quality of inflatable boat will be very different. The highest international requirement is that the base cloth should be 1100D. The tape used for high-grade boats is mainly made of 1100D base cloth and DuPont patent raw materials, which is called Hypalon (haipalong). There are no materials that meet such high standards in our country, and there is also a lack of corresponding standards for making boats. Most of the boat manufacturers make boats with cheap PVC rubber cloth.
Inflatable boat/rubber raft application status
It can be seen from the features listed above that inflatable boat has many advantages that other materials inflatable boat cannot have, especially when some inflatable boat cannot be used under certain wind and waves, inflatable boat can still be put into use, this is the objective reason why inflatable boat is widely used when the maritime border defense, customs and other duty stations and coastal rescue departments rush to the scene for rescue. In these occasions, the duty boats can approach the target at high speed and contact the target by collision, providing valuable time for the duty personnel; Inflatable boat put into the rescue site are usually equipped with dedicated rescue boats, it can be flexibly delivered and quickly approach the target when other inflatable boat are unable to approach the target, becoming a very critical special equipment in the rescue work (Yantai shipwreck in China, because the rescue ship could not get close to the target for a long time, it caused a great tragedy, among which the lack of rescue equipment was the lesson of blood).
Inflatable boat/rubber raft as an effective water carrier, it has been recognized. The most obvious examples are:
The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) not only stipulates that ships must be equipped with life rafts, but also puts forward corresponding requirements for coastal rapid rescue, and makes technical regulations depending on inflatable rescue boat as an effective tool;
Each country with Coast has widely used pneumatic boat in sea area duty; All countries have tried their best to put inflatable boat on site for use in marine disaster rescue and flood relief;